Smart Garden Guide

Why make your Garden Smart?

Adding wireless home automation to the outside of your home brings comfort and convenience to your garden as well as increasing your home's security.

Convenience

Some people love pottering in the garden, others just see it as yet another chore. Adding Smart wireless control can make a big difference in maintaining your garden and how you use it. A smart home garden can automatically look after the plants and grass by watering them based on the weather forecasts. You can have an intelligent mower automatically cut the grass when it's needed (no need to get out of the hammock). And, automatic lighting can welcome you home, or set the mood for a late nigh BBQ. All smart home additions add to your convenience.

Comfort

Smart lighting can bring your garden to life as it goes dark. Simple white lights can take away the dark spaces, or you can be more adventurous and add splashes of colour to highlight walls, plants and shrubs. It all enables you to enjoy your garden more, and extend it's use into the night time.

Security

Wireless home automation enables you to have your outside lighting automatically activated when it goes dark, it can stay on or be triggered by motion. This helps show that you're home and deter intruders trying their luck. You can also extend this to include security alarms for gates, sheds, workshops and other outbuildings.

Save the Plants and Water!

You may not always be around to ensure the plants and lawn are watered, and this is where a smart home comes to your rescue. It can automatically control an irrigation system - activating it at regular time intervals making sure the plants get the water they need. It can also take into account the real moisture levels in the ground and the weather forecast, so that you don't waste water if it's not needed.

Smartening Up your Garden

Adding Smart home automation to your garden is a good idea, so let's take a look in a little more detail on what you can do.

Smart Lighting

You can easily add smart wireless control to your garden lighting, giving you fingertip control or allowing them to automatically activate when required. You can really go to town adding functional as well as mood lighting throughout your garden. Coloured lighting can be used to transform the garden, blues, reds, purples can all be chosen at the touch of a button. There are a number of ways to add smart lighting, some easier than others - choose the one that suits your needs.

Wireless LEDs - the simplest solution - simply change the existing bulbs with wireless controlled LEDs from Osram, Philips Hue, Innr or Z-Wave. This is also the easiest way to have variable coloured lighting for your garden. Take a look at our Smart LED Bulbs.

Wireless Switches - these are also called relays, they wire into the power supply to your lights allowing them to be controlled wirelessly. Take a look at our Wireless Switches and Modules.

Wireless Light Fittings - these are purpose designed and include LED bulb and wireless control all in the light fitting. Best for a new installations but can be more expensive. Take a look at our range of Garden Light Fittings.

Security Lighting

Smart Security lighting is similar to the above, but focused on illuminating as large an area as possible to allow you to see what is happening, and to deter intruders. You can use the same types of smart light control as mentioned earlier, these can then be controlled by timers or motion sensors.

Smart Security

The home automation system can be extended to add general security measures to your garden, sheds and outbuildings. Some ideas include:

Door Sensors - these can be used on gates and shed doors to activate lights or an alarm when opened. We have a wide range of Wireless Sensors.

Wireless Locks - intelligent locks can be controlled remotely acting as an access system, or you can issue temporary PIN codes to give people restricted access when needed. Take a look at our range of Wireless Locks.

Irrigation

Keeping your lawn and plants watered can be hard work, but using an irrigation system controlled by the home automation system makes it easy. You can base the system on a low cost irrigation system or install a more permanent piped system with motorised electric valves - you can then add smart home control of the irrigation.

Wireless Relays - these simply control the motorised valves of the irrigation system, allowing you to automatically control when water is supplied. Vesternet offer a huge range of suitable relays, some are stand-alone systems such as GreenIQ and others integrate into a wider system such as Z-Wave. We have a large range of Wireless Irrigation Control products.

Weather Monitoring - the next step would be to make the system more intelligent so that it only waters your plants when needed - not when it's already raining! Most home automation systems can check weather forecasts, so they can then determine if watering is needed, this is the simple approach. You can even extend this by using soil moisture sensors to determine exactly which areas of the garden you wish to water, based on actual readings. Take a look at our Weather Monitoring products.

Automated Mowing

There aren't many things that look as fantastic as a freshly mown lawn with perfect stripes. But not everyone has the time to do it. Robotic Lawn Mowers fix this quickly and easily. They can be programmed to mow the lawn at regular intervals - when it's time, they power up, take themselves out of their 'garage' and cut the grass. All without you having to ask them or even be there! Take a look at our range of Robotic LawnMowers.

Getting Help and Advice

We can advise you on all aspects of home automation, especially your Smart Garden control. If you have any questions or need some help, just contact us at sales@vesternet.com.